Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Hillsboro schools roundup: Technology grants, free bikes and a field trip for online students

W.L. Henry bike giveaway

Twenty-one students at W.L. Henry Elementary School received free bikes from the Washington County Bicycle Transportation Coalition just before the holiday break. Students at J.W. Poynter Middle School helped refurbish them.
(Courtesy of the Hillsboro School District)

The holiday break is officially over: after two full weeks off, students and teachers in Hillsboro returned to the classroom on Monday.

The district calendar is coming back to life, as well. The Citizens’ Curriculum Advisory Committee will meet Monday at 7 p.m. at the district administration building, and the Hillsboro School Board will hold a work session on Tuesday of next week.

There were also a few news items that readers may have missed as they celebrated the holidays and the New Year. Here’s a small roundup:

Teachers win technology grants

The district announced last week that it would use funds from discretionary reserves to finance 27 teacher-proposed classroom projects that “use technology in new and innovative ways to increase student engagement and achievement.”

The 27 successful projects were part of a crop of 87 applications and chosen by a panel of nine staff and school board members. District spokeswoman Beth Graser estimated that the grants cost the district roughly $170,000.

The projects include the use of Amazon Kindles to expose students at Free Orchards Elementary School to “high-quality, increasingly challenging, and informative text” and iPads and an Apple TV at Hillsboro High School to develop “critical consumers of information.”

The Washington County Bicycle Transportation Coalition donated the cycles through its Adopt-A-Bike program, and the Bike Club at J.W. Poynter Middle School refurbished some of them. Poynter custodian John Sarrazin started the club a few years ago after successfully using his bike and tools to teach a student about fractions, Graser said. Members of the club were present at W.L. Henry when the youngsters received their bikes.

The W.L. Henry students had written statements about why they deserve to win a bike. A fifth-grader named Junior wrote, “I should be chosen because I could go home fast from school…my babysitter won’t be worried about me…and it would be exercise for my legs.”

Charter school Oregon Connections Academy is the state’s biggest public online school, with more than 3,000 students enrolled across Oregon, according to the state education department.

Over the holiday break, 34 of them – including at least two from Hillsboro – broke away from their online lessons and met in person, attending the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals as part of a field trip, according to the Hillsboro Tribune.

The museum is on Northwest Groveland Drive, just north of the Sunset Highway, between Northwest Jackson School Road and Northwest Helvetia Road.